Step 5: Dip!

Step 6: Enjoy!

You know what to do now without this step: enjoy the fruits of your labor! These make a fantastic after meal sweet or an afternoon pick-me-up. Just be...

Here's a recipe for delicious success: Homemade Peppermint Patties! These much beloved minty sweets are so simple to make that you'll be surprised at how quickly and effortlessly you can put them together. They can even be made vegan, if you are so inclined.

I have also included a variation for Junior Mints towards the end of this tutorial.

So, make your own candy and control the ingredients, save money, and, most importantly, have FUN!

Step 2: Start Mixing

Take out your bowl and dump in the powdered sugar, liquid sweetener of choice, water, shortening, cream cheese, peppermint and vanilla. Blend with and electric mixer until well blended (mixture will be crumbly.) Stir with a spoon to help it all cohere, using a bit of hand-power if necessary.

Step 3: Roll and Cut the Dough

Next, scoop the smooth white ball of dough onto your work surface that has been lightly dusted in powdered sugar (I used my trusty silpat.) Roll out until it is about 1/4 inch thick. Place in the freezer for 10 minutes.

(Psst! in that time you can have all those dishes cleaned and dried! Just sayin')

Made these the other night, they were a huge hit! Accidentally ran out of powdered sugar and had to substitute a little regular sugar to get the consistency right. Ended up with a unique grainy texture, but still fabulous flavor! Thanks for the recipe!

These are really yummy and here is a really helpful tip, (I hope) for anyone about to being making these: I combined all the wet ingredients for the mint center except the powdered sugar and put it in a gallon-size FREEZER (sturdier) ziplock bag. I put the sugar in cup by cup and just mixed it by squeezing and mashing it around. Your kids or grandkids could do this part, mess-free! It came together as a dough after 4-5 minutes and was already in the bag, so I rolled it flat while it was still in the bag! It's easy to chill too, being in the bag already. Yay!

I wanted mine to taste as much like Trader Joe's dark chocolate mints so I doubled the peppermint and left out the cream cheese. I also used coconut oil which does leave behind the faintest whiff of coconut which I didn't mind this time, but won't use again for mints but would be yummy if you were making, say....a Mounds bar lookalike!

Thanks, kitchenwench, for posting this instructable....I was so happy to find it!

I made these last weekend and they're a huge hit. Instead of patties, however, I made balls, and they turned out like French Creams. My brother insisted I send him the recipe instantly after tasting them as he's been unable to find french creams for 4 years now.

FWIW, I divided the dough prior to adding the peppermint. I divided it into 3 batches, then processed one for peppermint (with streaks of green dye), another with strawberry extract (and a red streak), and finally the last as grape (with red+blue dye well mixed, making it purple of course.)

I could not manage to get my belgian chocolate to be runny enough to spoon, and it was even hard to put the balls onto a fork and swirl in the chocolate. So my balls ended up having considerably more chocolate on them than originally anticipated. That said, everyone agreed the extra milk chocolate was not too much.

The key to getting these to look good is to dip quickly so there isn't a ton of chocolate to spill all over and to use a candy safe paintbrush to make a little swirl when it is cooling on your cooling rack or tray. The swirl will hide imperfections from the dip and the tool marks from dipping. This adds a lot of extra work though so I suggest just letting them look however as the taste will make up for it.

Since there is no cook time or rising, uniform thickness doesn't seem that important for this application. Would it be easier to roll the dough into a log and slice rounds off of that? If you are worried about uniformity after that, you could lay out the rounds and press them down slightly with a cookie sheet to get them to the same thickness. But slicing a log would avoid all the dough scraps that come from using a cutter.

I haven't tried stevia, but I used Splenda, with good results. I used the shortening and dark chocolate for dipping. My girlfriend does not like chocolate ( never heard of that before) so she made these and used carob chips to melt for dipping.

Quick question based on my miserable execution of the well done recipe: What's the best tool and technique for the dipping? While I certainly performed well at the "drop the patty into the chocolate" and "remove it slobbered in chocolate" parts, it's not the prettiest, most even or most functional final result, and certainly no where near the polished version in the pictures. For my work: Taste - pass. Presentation - Fail. At least I got the right part right if I couldn't get both. :-)

It is really important to let as much chocolate drip off as possible before laying the patties onto the wax paper. If you don't have a tool like the one above to dip them with, you could use two forks to hold the patty suspended over the melting bowl to let this happen. Otherwise, the chocolate will pool around the patty on the sides and be way too thin on the top.

Get your hands chilled by holding some ice cubes- keep your patty from melting. Then dip it manually after letting them sit, and I'd try using a spoon or other small implement that isn't sharp to carefully smooth out the coating after dipping. Maybe add more in thin areas and smooth out thick areas.

Cream cheese, butter, and shortening have different flavors (shortening is the most neutral). They also have different mouth-feel. You can substitute butter or shortening for the cream cheese, but the flavor and texture may be different (not in a bad way, just different from each other).

Lard is also very different. It is made from animal sources (typically pork fat). The other fats are from vegetable sources (cream cheese is dairy, of course). If you do use lard, make sure it is purified. Don't just use beef or pork drippings from cooking unless you want your candy to taste like meat. Lard used to be used in Oreo cookies which is why they tasted so good. Now Oreos contain another hydrogenated fat (like coconut oil or palm oil). Yes, it's not good for you, but so long as you don't eat it by the pound, you're probably OK.

These look so good! I'm not from the U.S. so I'd never heard of them before, but since I love mint now I really have to try them! Thank you so much for sharing this!I don't know what shortening is, but after a quick search I learned that it's basically any fat that is solid at room temperature. So, is it ok to use butter or lard to make the dough instead of said shortening?

Hi Knightsabre,Thanks for the question! Yes, if I were making them vegan, I would just leave out the cream cheese. The original recipe did not call for cream cheese at all, I added it in. I will edit the recipe to make that point more clear.Thanks!-kitchenwench

Hi mousewrites,Yes, just go without the cream cheese for the vegan option. I have made them both ways before, and the people I gave them to couldn't tell the difference between the varieties-still just as yummy without that bit of cream cheese!Please Let me know if you have any further questions.Thanks!-kitchenwench